Yahoo Secretly Worked For the NSA For Years, Millions Of Emails Scanned

Ever since the Edward Snowden incident where an embarrassingly huge amount of U.S. government spying secrets was leaked, the world has been wary of potential privacy breaches. Thanks to a new report indicating that Yahoo was government asset used to spy on Americans, the world was treated to a shocking development once again. In response to potential scrutiny, Google, and other tech companies are already denying any involvement in the matter.

Under orders from the U.S. government, Yahoo Inc. reportedly created unique software that allowed it to scan hundreds of millions of emails without the knowledge of users, Reuters reports. This information came from three separate sources that used to work for the company, as well as another individual familiar with the matter.

The purpose of scanning emails was to find pertinent information that could then be handed over to agencies like the NSA or the FBI if requested. By all accounts, this is the only case where a U.S.-based internet company agreed to scan all incoming emails. Every other example of compliant tech entities limited their surveillance to messages that were already stored on their servers or targeting specific accounts.

The sources also revealed that it was Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s CEO herself who agreed to the demands by the government. This apparently did not sit well with other executives including Alex Stamos, who was the Chief Information Security Officer at the time.

When asked about the revelation, Yahoo could only say that it is a law-abiding company. Considering how the NSA’s spying activities could technically be called legal and was thus not strictly in violation of any laws, this statement is open to interpretation.

In anticipation of the fallout of this report, Google is already denying that it has done any email scanning of any kind for government agencies, Fortune reports. Microsoft and Twitter issued the same denials.